Directed by Michael Gill, one of the most brilliant cultural commandos responsible for the high end of 1960s British television, and written by Yvonne Gilan, then his wife, it stars Juliet Harmer as the Very Beautiful Girl, and is narrated by a fruity Peter Ustinov.

It also features a cameo from a very young, bespectacled A. A. Gill, son of the director and, now, restaurant and TV critic of The Sunday Times. See if you can spot him.

The film charts the coming of age of this clever and beautiful girl with the fruit fetish. In search of kindred spirits of like intellect, she goes to live in the city, but finds herself cleaning in the Ministry. Then — boom — she falls in love, and the peaches die as her love grows. But, in a stroke of luck and British wit, she transfers her craving to pickled onions.

The film won several awards and made Gill consider Hollywood. Happily, he chose to remain at the BBC, where he created the first adult educational art series and later approached Sir Kenneth Clark to make the brilliant television series Civilisation.

Now, in a newspaper first, in conjunction with the British Film Institute (bfi) which owns the rights to the film, Times readers can download this cult story.

Click here to download Peaches or click here to stream

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